


I Came In Like a Wrecking Ball

by PiffleLovesBaseball



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gen, Kid Fic, Parent Tony Stark, Precognition, Superpowers, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:16:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29860752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiffleLovesBaseball/pseuds/PiffleLovesBaseball
Summary: When Fury announces the addition of a super-powered new member to the team, the Avengers expect anything but a six years-old little girl to be their new teammate. And they are even more surprised when Fury tell them what little Morgan wants in return for her cooperation. Tony is not gonna like it.Follow the journey of Morgan Baker into getting the family she had always wanted and watch Tony Stark become the dad he never knew he would be happy to be.
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov, Tony Stark & Original Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 01

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'm Piffle. This is not my first fan fiction (I started too many and even completed some) but it's the first I decided to post.  
> Be aware that english is not my first language and that I'm translating the story from the one I wrote in my native language (italian).  
> The good news is that the story is already complete, so it has a beginning and an end and something like seventy-something looong chapters in between. I hate when good fan fiction get abandoned or forgotten (but I understand how inspiration can fade away), so I made sure I ended it before deciding to post it. I just have to translate it.
> 
> A couple of things before you start reading:
> 
> * My OC's name is Morgan, but she is NOT MCU's Morgan, nor she is related in any way to Tony. It's just that I liked the name and, when the story became something more than one of my usual unfinished drafts, I was too attached to this name and I decided to keep it even if it might be a bit confusing. Feel free to picture my Morgan's look as Endgame's Morgan in your head, but know that they are not the same character.
> 
> * My story follow the MCU canon timeline up until Civil War, with some little changes here and there. The Accords happened but the team managed to stay together and there was no Bucky's involvment in it. Thanos happened but not as in the movies, more like a very powerful villain that almost destroyed the world but that the Avengers, together with other heroes, defeated in the end.  
> And everything, from The Battle of New York to Thanos happened in a shorter time frame (like, 2 years)  
> Also, Tony still have the reactor (because I like it) and there's no Wanda and no Vision, because they are two characters I don't like that much and have trouble to write.

With an impatient huff, Tony Stark let himself fall theatrically on one of the couches of the common room in the Avengers Tower and glanced at Nick Fury with both irritation and sarcasm.

"So? What is so urgent you felt the need to summon all of us at this ungodly hour of the morning? Some of us have a company to run, you know?" was his biting comment.

As expected, Fury just glanced back at him with his well known mix of annoyance and scolding, but it was Rhodey the next that spoke:

"You don't run anything, Tony. That's all Pepper"

Tony opened his mouth, offended.

"Well, excuse me. There's ' _Stark Industries_ ' written on the business card. Not ' _Potts Industries_ ' " he reminded him.

Some of the others laughed lightly, knowing well how Tony had been more than happy to entrust the management of his company to his ex PA to concentrate full-time on his superhero career.

"Can we go back to our meeting?" Fury asked, clearly impatient.

To be honest, it was quite difficult to be in a serious and concentrated mood when half of the team was still in their pajamas and the small table in front of the couches was covered in pizza boxes from the previous night's dinner.

Technically, Avengers Tower had a beautiful meeting room for them to use, but most of the time the team preferred the peace of the common room to the austerity of the official one.

And if Fury agreed to talk to them _there_ , it meant they weren't discussing the end of the world or any other horrible, super-secret threat.

The director of SHIELD cleared his throat, trying to restore some sort of professionalism.

"We decided to add a new element to your team" he finally announced, looking at all of the members of the Avengers.

The only ones missing were Thor and Strange, the first one almost always on Asgard as of recently, to reign his world together with his father, while the second had clearly implied that he liked his freedom and that, even after everything they had gone through, he didn't considered himself as an official member of the Avengers.

"Not a chance" Tony immediately argued.

"Stark..." Fury sighed.

"No. I don't care which small-time agent you wanna put in the team. We are good as we are. Don't need anybody. We are like a finely tuned machine, a very delicate one, and any new addition would just ruin the harmony of the group. So no. _Nada_ " Tony added.

"Well? What about Spiderman then?" Nat pointed out.

"Peter is not an Avenger. He won't become one until he's thirty. Maybe fourty" was Tony's answer.

Sam and Rhodey burst out laughing and Clint seized the opportunity to tease his friend:

"Are those fatherly vibes I'm sensing in that sentence?"

"I'm not- I just built him a suit so that he didn't have to swing through Queens in a onesie!" Tony tried to defend himself.

"Tony, you called one of the protocols in Peter's suit ' _Training wheels protocol_ ' " Bruce pointed out with a little smile.

"Isn't that cute?" Natasha smirked.

Tony jumped up from the couch and took some steps backwards to be able to watch them all.

"There are no fatherly feelings. I'm not his father" he stated, almost with forced defiance.

They all had a special consideration for their youngest member. It was an almost natural reaction to Peter's adorable naivety. You can't help but care for him.

But Tony's feelings had always gone beyond simple affection and even a blind man would have noticed. The man was just too stubborn to admit it in front of them.

"Man, his aunt has pretty much extended parental rights to you" Sam reminded him.

"She just gave me partial guardianship so that I can take medicals decisions if something happens during a mission"

"Isn't that the same?" Rhodey insisted.

Tony was saved from having to reply by Fury's umphtheen sigh.

"Can we go back to our discussion?"

They all dropped the teasing and moved their attention back to the man, who turned on a holo-screen of a personal information file with all kinds of data and photos.

There was a brief moment of silence while they all looked at the document.

It was Nat the first one to talk:

"Is that photo extremely old or that's a child?" she asked.

"Yes. It's a kid" Fury confirmed.

There was another moment of genuine, collective confusion.

"Okaaay..." Sam slowly started "I imagine now it's the moment you tell us she is some sort of mystical being hundreds of years old that for unknown reasons looks like a five years old little girl, right?"

"Six years old, to be honest. And no, she's not any mythological being, even if we can't say she's a normal kid either" Fury explained.

Steve frowned.

"Wait. Are you telling us you want to put a six years old little girl in the team?" he asked confused.

Fury didn't answer but the screen in front of them changed, showing a long series of documents and reports almost unreadable on the holo-screen.

"We learnt about Morgan's existence almost by chance, snooping around CPS' reports while following some trails of Hydra's genetic experiments. She had nothing to do with them, but we found out she's quite interesting nonetheless. She has the power to predict the future in her dreams, with notable precision and with a head start good enough to be able to make the difference" he explained.

"Oneiric precognition" Bruce mumbled.

"Exactly. She had been able to predict most of the last threats you had to face and that you were highly unprepared to deal with" Fury nodded.

"Well, _sorry_ for our unpreparedness" Tony bit back, his voice full of sarcasm.

Fury glanced at him with a scolding expression, but ignored his jab and continued:

"The ability to predict the occurrence of big threats will make us able to act out immediately and with the right assets ready. It will mean less victims, less wounded and less collateral damage. Potentially, we could be able to address events as big as the chitauri invasion before they even reach civilians"

"Well, put it like this, it sounds impressive" Steve had to admit.

"I thought Dr. Strangelove could do the exact same thing. Isn't he the one that makes all those hocus-pocus and see in the future?" Tony stressed.

"Strange can see in the future, yes, but what he sees is a plethora of possible futures, sometimes radically different from one another. Futures that might not even ever happen. He does not have the same precision Morgan has shown. And he would have to spend all of his time monitoring the timestream and I highly doubt that's what he wants to do with his life" Fury reminded him.

"Okay. Let's assume for a moment that this really works..." Steve began.

"There's nothing to assume, captain. Morgan's abilities are real" the director clarified.

"All right. The kid can see the future. And then? She just... phones us or calls us through SHIELD? She relays the information to you and you call us? It sounds just too complicated and potentially flawed" Captain America reasoned.

"Without question" Fury agreed "That's why she would live here at the Tower. She doesn't see coordinates or exact times in her dreams. She just sees what is going to happen. It's up to you all to put the puzzle together and take action"

"Wait a minute" Sam jumped up "I don't think that moving an entire family with who knows how many kids in our headquarters is the brightest idea. Our life is already crazy and insane as it is; adding some strangers in our home can only go wrong"

"Sam is right. We talk about secret missions and matters of national security at the breakfast table. Having to watch our back every time we open our mouth because some random civilians could hear would just be stressful. Not to talk about security: there is a big, red target on this place. There's no reason to put innocent people in danger by moving them in the belly of the beast" Rhodey said.

The group had their routines, their climate of trust and camaraderie born from dozens and dozens of missions together. The Avengers had their own balance, not always stable and sometimes terribly fragile. A whole family barging in their life would only jeopardize the stability of the team.

And even if they put them on some other floor in the Tower and not strictly live _with_ them, their presence would still cause some tension and a sense of uneasiness.

"That's why we have no intention of doing any of that" Fury surprised them "Morgan lives in a group-home and she has no contact with her biological parents. So there's no family. Just Morgan"

Nick Fury could easily see the variety of emotions and reaction of the team after that detail.

Some, like Rogers and Romanoff, seemed surprised but inclined to accept and try it out; others, like Banner and Rhodes, were clearly worried and uncertain.

But before they could start to weigh the situation and open up a discussion that, he was sure, would lead to a vote or an argument, Fury wanted to put on the table also the last, dangerous detail.

"There's a condition, however" he said.

"A condition?" Sam echoed him.

"The _kid_ put a condition?" Rhodey repeated incredulously.

Tony couldn't help but let slip a sarcastic laugh.

"What? She wants to be paid in candies and dolls?" he joked with dripping sarcasm "She is still wet behind the ears and she wants to put conditions? Young people today..."

Fury turned his eye right on Tony, ready to repeat that one sentence he had spent weeks to elaborate, exactly because he knew the effect it would have on the eccentric and egocentric Avenger.

There was no way to put it in a positive light, but he would at least try to limit the damages.

"Morgan will help us out only if Tony Stark agrees to legally adopt her as his daughter" he cautiously said.

It followed a full minute of astonished silence in which he could almost hear his words sinking in their minds.

Then, almost unexpectedly, Tony burst out laughing.

He was laughing so much that he was almost bent on himself and had to lean against the couch to not fall on the floor.

To be honest, Fury had expected a great variety of reactions from Stark, but none of these included laughter.

"Okay, okay. You got me. I'll admit defeat" he began, lifting his hand in surrender "You wanted to get back at me for shutting down the power while you were doing that stupid videogame tournament so you concoted this circus" he said to Clint and Sam.

The previous week Tony had ordered FRIDAY to shut down the power in the common room to punish Hawkeye and Falcon, guilty of disturbing him with their Mario Kart tournament while he was not only working, but also suffering from a migraine.

"And I have to congratulate you because, for a moment, I swear I almost believed it. I mean, you even convinced Fury to help you out! That's impressive" he laughed.

"This is not a joke, Stark" Fury repeated with steel in his voice.

"Are you serious?" Nat asked.

The director of SHIELD sighed:

"Like most kids, Morgan is a fan of the Avengers. And she seems to have a fixation for Iron Man. So when she understood she got the possibility to bargain her collaboration with us, with _you,_ she asked to have something more than a simple partnership and become instead integral part of the life of the man she looks up to"

It took a minute for Tony to understand that Fury was seriously not joking and that the kid's condition was not only real, but also somehow approved by SHIELD. Otherwise, Fury wouldn't be there in the first place.

"Well, you can say to your little fortune-teller with the crystal ball that we don't need her services" he replied, not amused anymore.

"Tony..." Steve tried. But Tony turned sharply to look at him.

"No. It's a stupid and foolish condition. We won't even take it into consideration! This is not an employment office for poor little orphans and there is no fucking way we will let a brat blackmail us for her own amusement! I can't believe you even thought of accepting such a stupid demand!" he shouted.

"Stark, her abilities can make the difference..." Fury tried to explain.

"I don't want to hear one more word on the matter!" Tony insisted, angrier and angrier with every second.

"The team can be ten times more prepared and efficient knowing what you are going to run into. The number of civilian victims would reduce drastically! Just think about the Battle of New York. Think about how many would still be alive if you had been alerted even just half an hour in advance of what was going to happen. Manhattan could have been evacuated. We could have contained the damage" Fury insisted.

Tony shook his head and started pacing in the living room.

"No. Absolutely no. I hate kids. I find them annoying!" was Tony's justification.

Clint lifted his head.

"I thought you and Pepper were trying for one" he asked, surprised.

They all had heard him asking 'Are we expecting?' to Pepper dozens of times, almost every time the woman came to him with something 'important' to discuss.

Some of them were even convinced that Tony was hiding a pair of newborn slippers in the attic, waiting for that kind of good news to celebrate.

So Clint's surprise was more than legit.

"Yeah, but I want _my_ kids. Pepper and mine, possibly. Some Mini-Starks with genius level IQ that I can shape in my image, not some psychopathic brat, arrogant enough to blackmail us!" Tony shouted.

"So, are you saying you are ready to take responsibility for the hundreds of lives lost from now on that you could have saved if not for your egoism and stubbornness?" was Fury's low blow.

"I don't..." Tony tried to say.

His eyes looked for support from his teammates, for somebody that saw that idea for the stupid and ridiculous blackmailing that was.

But all he found was pity and even reproach.

"Director Fury is right, Tony" Natasha spoke up.

"Nobody is asking you to take her to the park or change her diapers. She just wants your name on a piece of paper" Fury tried to sugarcoat it.

"I..." Tony tried again before raising his hands with rage "You know what? Do what you fucking want! But know that all I'll do is give her my fucking name! You'll need to take care of the rest because I won't hear anything more about this shit!" he gave up in the end, leaving the room with angry steps and vanishing downstairs in his lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting the second chapter right away, so you can read a bit much of the story. I plan to post a new chapter every Friday, hoping I can keep translating my original work at the same pace I'm doing now.
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated, especially since my confidence in being able to write interesting stories is kinda low.  
> Let me also know if you find grammatical errors or sentences that sound weird. My english level is kinda good, but translating is harder than it seems so I will be more than happy to edit the chapters to make them better.
> 
> And know that I have a bit of an anxiety problem, so harsh critics would probably make me delete the story or stop posting new chapters in order to not have this turning into a source of uneasiness for me. If you don't like my story, please just stop reading it. There's plenty of other wonderful fan fictions on this site that you can read instead.


	2. Chapter 02

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan arrives and Tony already can't stand her

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's the second chapter.  
> If you are still reading this, thanks. Hope I won't disappoint you!  
> This chapter is pretty long. I never give myself a word limit when I write, so some chapters might be shorter, other way longer.

Tony's mood had been an obvious crescendo of anger and irritation that, in the three days following the meeting with Fury, had brought the billionaire to be practically unapproachable.

Any attempt by the rest of the team to calm him down or to make him see the whole situation under a better light had resulted in discussions in which were also brought up things that had nothing to do with the arrival of the child, or in one-sided outbursts that saw Tony take out his anger and frustration on anyone that tried to reason with him.

Clint was the first to start avoiding him, followed closely by Sam and, after a while by Rhodey. Steve, Natasha and Bruce were the ones that seemed to endure better the man's anger, but, as of that early May afternoon, the expected day for Morgan's arrival, the only one who still dare to approach Tony was Bruce, who over the years had developed an unrivaled patience and calm thanks to the Hulk.

FRIDAY announced the arrival of Agent Coulson shortly after three in the afternoon.

The doors of the private elevator that connected the Tower's top floors with the parking lot opened with a rustle. A moment later, an indistinct figure shot out of the elevator, crossing the entire length of the hall and crashing with a loud 'thump' into one of the glass windows overlooking the city.

Phil Coulson made a much calmer and composed entrance, a small smile halfway between sorry and amused painted on his face and a shocking pink trolley in his hand.

"Gentlemen," he greeted them, barely paying attention to the little girl who, after the window, had run to stare at the huge television in front of the three couches.

"It's so huge!" they heard her comment in an amazed and incredulous voice.

But that didn't last and, a second later, she had already sprinted towards one of the holographic panels that served as some sort of bulletin board and 'think tank', mainly for the creative members of the group, namely Bruce and Tony.

It was not uncommon to see it filled with messy notes and projects of weird machines, chemical formulas, photos of suspicious people or even just the grocery list.

The little girl gaped at it, stretching a hand to try and touch it and, shortly after, passing through it in a flurry of giggles and excited comments at half voice.

"Morgan," Coulson gently called her, making her turn around and then approach the group with light and childish steps.

For the first time, the team was finally able to give a face to that little girl who had brought so much confusion in their group in those last days.

Morgan Baker was small, rather short for her age, although perhaps it was just an impression due to the fact that she was wearing clothes a few sizes too large for her.

Her hair was a very dark and almost cold brown, its length barely grazing her shoulders, and embellished with straight and perpetually ruffled bangs.

Her eyes were a very dark blue, almost leaning on the purple spectrum, a really unusual color that almost seemed to emphasize that there was something special in that little girl.

Morgan stopped beside Coulson, weaving her hands behind her back and, looking up at the group of superheroes gathered in front of her, she beamed a smile at them, showing the little window caused from the loss of the first baby teeth.

"Morgan, the Avengers. Avengers, this is Morgan Baker" Coulson introduced them.

"Well, welcome," Nat greeted her.

"Hey there, little one!" Clint said instead, squatting down in front of her and extending his hand "I'm Clint."

"I know. Hawkeye," she replied, shaking with enthusiasm the hand he was helding out to her "I know everything about you" she commented.

They saw her look at every one of them in turn, but it was when her sight landed on Tony, the only one that had preferred to stay next to the kitchen counter, that her eyes seemed to light up even more.

With the same enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning, Morgan walked around the long dining table and dashed towards Tony, grabbing his legs and hugging him as if her life depended on it.

"I am so happy that you will become my dad! It has always been my dream!" she told him, face buried in his pants due to the impressive height difference.

Tony's surprise at that lightning-fast approach immediately began to fade into discomfort from that unwanted contact.

Almost disgusted, he stiffly reached out and pried her off of his legs and pushed her back a couple of steps.

"Yes... Something like that," he muttered uncomfortably.

It had taken him _days_ to find at least vaguely acceptable the idea of sacrificing himself for that oh-so-important cause and agree to welcome in his family a perfect stranger. And it had been an acceptance born from the fact that the rest of the team had assured him that they would have done their part and that the whole thing wouldn't just fall on him alone.

"It will be more of a group thing," he added again, trying to ignore the adoring look she was showering him with.

Usually he appreciated the attention; heck, for years he had done everything and anything to always be at the center of it!

But if once there were only businessmen and women looking for a good bachelor chasing him, since he became Iron Man there were little boys and all kinds of children trying to get hold of his attention more than anybody else. And most of the time he was happy to give it to them.

But in this case, more than pleasing him it was throwing him into a state of anxiety and discomfort.

He just didn't know how to deal with children. It didn't come naturally to him.

Suddenly, Morgan seemed struck by an idea.

"You have to sign the documents right away!" she exclaimed, finally detaching herself from his sweatpants and hopping impatiently to Coulson, who hurried to take a file out of his briefcase.

A weird sense of inevitability and vague suffocation gripped his stomach and Tony found himself procrastinating in an almost embarrassing way at the prospect of making things official.

"Nah, there's no need. It's the thought that counts," he tried to dissuade her.

The fewer official documents had existed, the easier Tony could have pulled back once it would become clear to everyone that that partnership had no future.

He had strong doubts about the actual usefulness of the alleged powers of the little girl and was more than convinced that, given one or two months, everything would be revealed as the immense fraud that really was.

A child that saw the future in her dreams. What a joke!

And since he had no intention to be tied up, even if only on paper, to a brat he didn't know nothing about (the file Fury had provided them was really of little help), the fewer things he signed, the less his own lawyers would have to work to free him from any responsibility towards that child.

She frowned, almost confused.

"Documents are important," she told him seriously.

Of course he managed to get the only six-year-old girl able to understand the importance of a signature on a stupid piece of paper.

"So if something happens, no one can say anything," Morgan added.

Tony would have liked to argue that that was exactly how he hoped it would go, that some loophole would allow him to get out of it as quickly as possible.

But opening up that Pandora's box once again would just make Cap's guilty traps and Bruce's psychological arguments start up all over again. And he was tired of hearing them.

So, with growing anger and irritation, Tony approached Coulson and signed the goddamn papers that were giving him that unwanted daughter.

"Great," Coulson said as soon as the precious papers disappeared back into his folder "I would say that my job here is done"

The agent of SHIELD extended the pink trolley towards Morgan with a smile, saying goodbye to the team and disappearing back into the elevator.

Morgan watched him go and then turned around, all but afraid of suddenly finding herself alone with a bunch of complete strangers.

"Where do I put my stuff?" she asked in her childish voice, a sound that Tony was already learning to hate.

The little girl kept her eyes full of expectations on Tony, as if there was only him in the room and not another handful of superheroes to fangirl over.

"The bedrooms are upstairs," Natasha told her with a sweetness that she normally reserved only for Clint's children.

Tony wondered why the hell she didn't ask for the spy as her surrogate parent: Nat could be a ruthless killer when on a mission, but she knew how to be genuinely sweet and sensitive if the situation called for it.

Or Steve. Captain America was maybe a little stiff and old-fashioned, but he was the ideal model for any child and the perfect example of the American father.

Anyone in that room could be a better father than him, well known for his excesses and his sharp tongue more than for his merits.

But that damned little girl had wanted him.

"Is it close to Tony's room?" she asked, clearly expecting an affirmative answer.

Natasha's smile wavered and her eyes searched Tony's.

"No, sweetheart," he replied in a sweet tone that, had Morgan been a little older, she would have recognized as false and utterly derisive "Tony has a whole attic for himself two floors above this one, because that was already his home before the tower became the Avengers' headquarters and he didn't want to give it up" the genius explained.

Her confident smile faded, turning into a slight pout.

"Then I want a room in the attic too," she demanded.

"You can't, because Tony loves his privacy and because one room is as good as another. Besides, isn't it much better to sleep next to all these famous Avengers rather than with Iron Man only? " was his impatient attempt to convince her.

He was already feeling his patience slipping away with each minute and he wasn't sure he could keep that facade of friendliness any longer.

"No," was her curt reply, "It would be strange if we slept on different floors. Now you are my dad and kids must always sleep as close to their parents as possible" she nodded, like it was obvious.

He had no idea who had convinced her of such a thing or if the whole reasoning was her own, but what was certain was that Morgan seemed to believe firmly in that idea and it was evident that she wouldn't take another 'no' for an answer.

Both Natasha and Steve gave him a meaningful glance that could only be translated into a _'give her what she wants and let's put an end to this'_.

Tony opened his mouth to argue but Clint preceded him, standing up and walking towards the internal elevator.

"Of course! I'm sure Tony has a lot of free rooms in his penthouse," he exclaimed, glancing at Tony with a hidden scolding in his eyes.

The man gritted his teeth, barely holding a swear as the two passed in front of him.

"Make yourselves at home," he grunted, leading the way.

Nat, Bruce and Steve joined the group.

The Avengers Tower had some public elevators for the company employees in the lower part of the building, but it was possible to access the upper floors only with an authorization from FRIDAY; a second private elevator, which served as the main entrance to the house, connected the Avengers' private quarters with their private garage.

And to move between the various levels of the house (the laboratory and infirmary, the common area, the bedrooms and Tony's penthouse) there was a third elevator, without buttons and also operated by the artificial intelligence created by Tony.

That one was what brought the little group up to Tony's private apartment, an immense ultra modern penthouse equipped with a large living room with a mini bar, a kitchenette with a big breakfast island, three bathrooms, a study, a mini workshop and five rooms.

An inaccessible part of the floor, which could only be entered by a door well camouflaged, had been used to store Tony's armors and served also as a departure and landing pad when the man suited up as Iron Man.

The immense windows allowed the apartment to be flooded with natural light practically all day long. At those heights, the balconies were practically unusable, so he had built a solarium with synthetic grass, tables and armchairs that, in the end, he almost never used.

To be honest, the only opening onto the outside of the whole headquarters was located next to the common room, where a long landing pad allowed access to their quarters by air and where the Quinjet was usually parked.

Morgan set out to explore the penthouse as soon as the elevator doors opened just enough to let her out and, in less than a minute, the little girl had already chosen the bedroom she wanted.

It was one of the four guest rooms (fortunately not the one usually used by Pepper), the closest to the master bedroom occupied by Tony, even if you still had to go through the whole open space hosting the kitchen and the living room before reaching it.

At least, Tony told himself, the brat wouldn't be _too_ close.

Feeling completely at home now, Morgan lost any interest in them and she began to unpack her baggage, action that she accompanied with comments addressed to herself and murmured songs under Clint's amused expression, who knew well how a child of that age left alone to unpack a suitcase and arranging clothes hardly did a good job.

Unable to bear anything else and feeling on the verge of bursting, Tony walked away to the kitchen and reached for the coffee maker.

"Tony..." Bruce tried to talk to him, sensing the imminent outburst of his friend, but Tony gave him a heated glance.

"Those weren't the agreements!" he blurted out, "I would have signed the documents but then it would have been a group thing"

"And so it will be," Professor Banner assured him.

"Yet I am the one who is forced to sleep together with her," Tony reminded him.

"It's not the end of the world, Tony," Natasha rolled her eyes.

"Well, I like my privacy!"

"But if you always walk around the lab in your boxers," she retorted, remembering with fun one of his most absurd habits.

Tony replied with an angry and impatient wave of his hand.

"I don't understand why I'm still here to try to discuss this with team _'We go along with Fury's idiotic ideas'_ "

"Tony, she's just a little girl," Bruce reminded him, while Clint returned from the bedrooms, an amused look on his face.

"From my point of view, a chitauri is a thousand times better than a brat" was his angry reply.

Sensing that no reason was valid enough to convince Tony to put aside his pride and his violated privacy, Natasha and the others left, leaving him alone with his anger and his cup of coffee.

The attic fell again into a pleasant silence, broken too soon by Morgan's return in the living room.

"Can I see your room?" she asked him with a big smile.

"No," Tony muttered into his cup of coffee.

"Can I see your Iron Man suits?" Morgan tried again.

"No," Tony repeated.

"Do you want to play cards with me?" she asked out of nowhere, lifting a deck of pink colored cards that God alone knew where she had gotten them from.

Tony had to tell himself that the one in front of him was just a little girl and that breaking her nose in the rush of the moment wouldn't be good press for the Avengers.

But he was now scratching the bottom of his emergency supply of patience and he was not sure he could endure her clinginess much more without some very unpleasant consequences.

Then an idea lit his mind.

"Look, why don't you watch some TV? You just need to ask FRIDAY" he proposed.

Morgan cocked her head in confusion and Tony pointed to the large plasma screen and the two leather armchairs placed in front of it.

"FRIDAY, turn on the TV for Morgan," he ordered his AI.

" _Yes, boss_ ," the warm, melodious voice of FRIDAY replied.

The TV switched on automatically and Tony noted with satisfaction how the little girl's eyes widened with pure wonder.

"How did you do?!" she asked incredulously.

Tony smiled knowingly.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y controls the whole house, from the lights to the elevator. If you want to listen to some music, you can ask her; if you want to watch some TV, you can ask her,"

he told her.

"And where is she?" Morgan wanted to know.

"She's a computer. It's nowhere and everywhere in the house at the same time. Come on, why don't you try?"

He saw her looking around the room slightly intimidated and clearly doubtful, the boldness of just a few moments before vanished into thin air.

"FRIDAY" she murmured in a low voice, without detaching her eyes from Tony's "turn on the living room lights," she ordered almost in a whisper.

The three lamps in the living area turned on and the little girl jumped up and down excitedly.

"See? It's easy,” Tony told her with a very fake smile.

He had seen people much older and much more mature than her losing their minds over his artificial intelligence (Peter above all) and he had no doubt that such a thing would have caught the little girl's attention just enough to distract her from him.

"Why don't you go sit on the couch now and have a good time giving orders to FRIDAY? You can also ask her questions or let her tell you things," he suggested, waving his hands to show her to get out of there and move towards the living area "I have some work to do in my office," he lied.

Morgan moved in a wonder towards the sofa, starting to shower FRIDAY with orders and questions, until the AI's voice practically became a continuous stream of answers and explanations.

Pleased to have gotten the kid out of the way, Tony went to shut himself up in his office.

He didn't really have anything to work on but at least in there he could pretend his life hadn't just been invaded by a nosy and insistent brat, convinced that he was happy to be her father.

However, he took the opportunity to rewrite some of FRIDAY's activation protocols and update access permissions to the various rooms of the house, just to avoid having the little girl show up in the armor room or prevent her from making the Quinjet take off without permission.

His peace, however, was short-lived. Less than an hour later, the sound of someone crashing with force against the door of his office interrupted him from the sketch of a new machine gun for War Machine he was working on.

"FRIDAY, open the door for me," he heard her voice from behind the door.

" _I'm afraid I can't do that, Morgan. According to my protocols, you have no freedom of access to Mr. Stark's office,_ " was the AI response.

Tony smiled to himself, satisfied with having stemmed successfully the child's nosiness, but it was just a momentary victory:

"Tony. I'm hungry. Can you make dinner? I would like some Mac'n Cheese," he heard her say after knocking on the door.

He ignored her, but it was obviously too much to hope that she had understood the hint and given up.

Probably convinced that the lack of response was due to Tony not having heard the knock, the next one came ten times more loud, to the point that the lamp Tony kept on his desk vibrated slightly, leading him to wonder if, in addition to her own presumed powers of foresight, the child did not possess even some sort of super strength.

"TONY! I'M HUNGRY! CAN YOU PREPARE ME SOME MAC'N CHEESE?" she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Tony jumped to his feet, finally opening the door and coming face to face (or rather, belly to face, given the fact that Morgan barely came to his waist) with Morgan's pleading look.

Pushing back the outburst he wanted to shout at her, Tony tried to sound reasonable:

"Fact number one: I'm not deaf. So lower your voice. Fact number two: I don't cook, let alone on command. If none of the others have cooked, I usually order something and I'll have it delivered," he told her dryly.

He saw her change her expression from vaguely curious (how could she possibly find _everything_ he said interesting?) into one of clear disapproval.

Tony Stark, one of the most successful men in the world and national superhero, was receiving a _disapproval_ glance from a six-year-old girl.

He would have laughed at it if it hadn't been so infuriating.

"Always eating takeaway food is not a good habit," she scolded him. "It's a waste of money and bad for your health. It's always better to cook for yourself. It's much more _rewardable_ "

The truth was Tony cooked quite often.

He had always cooked when he lived alone and had nothing to do and even after the birth of Avengers, when everybody moved in, he had found himself cooking downstairs for the team or just for himself when others were out for their things.

But he didn't always have the time or the desire to cook, so FRIDAY had ready a whole list of takeaway restaurants in the area to which he and others often resorted to for their meals.

Tony didn't even waste time telling her that ordering a salad from one of the best restaurants in Manhattan was way healthier than preparing at home some caloric bomb like the Mac'n Cheese she was asking for. Clearly the little girl had her own ideas about how the world went.

"And anyway, no one sells Mac'n Cheese. And I want to eat that," Morgan added with a whine.

Tony could _smell_ the impending tantrum, because he had no intention of cooking a stupid plate of Mac'n Cheese and, of course, she clearly wasn't going to eat anything else.

So he tried a different tactic:

"But we wanted to order pizza tonight, to celebrate your arrival. Don't you think it would be rude if you stayed here to eat alone?"

The speed at which she clearly changed her mind was astonishing, going from discontented and sulky to flattered and enthusiastic.

"Can I have french fries on my pizza?" she asked, jumping excitedly.

"You can have what you want, sweetheart," he replied with that fakely sweet and understanding tone that he usually used to make fun of people who irritated him.

He couldn't believe he would ever have to use it with a child, but Morgan had inspired him so far such annoyance and irritation that not even certain hated business rivals of his had ever made him feel.

Morgan cried out in happiness, raising her hands in victory. Tony signaled her with his hand to go to the elevator, following her closely.

They went down to the common room, where Sam and Rhodey were watching the sports news sprawled on the sofa, while Natasha, Bruce, Clint and Steve sat at the kitchen counter, reading some SHIELD documents.

"Hey! Here you are," Nat greeted them as they appeared from the elevator.

"Let's order some pizzas," Tony snapped with gritted teeth and a fake smile that said a lot about how well his current cohabitation with Mogan was going.

Morgan immediately headed for the military duo on the sofa, starting a long dissertation in an expert tone on how FRIDAY worked and on all the things that the AI was able to do, complete with a practical demonstration that Sam and Rhodey gladly agreed to watch.

Tony was almost disgusted by the way the two of them encouraged her, letting out amazed murmurs whenever she gave an order to FRIDAY, as if it weren't years that they themselves did the exact same thing every single day.

Heading straight for the bar, Tony poured himself a glass of whiskey and swallowed it in one go, shivering with pleasure as the strong taste of the drink ran down his throat and for the pleasant feeling of lightheadedness that followed.

"Hey, take it easy," Natasha said.

It wasn't uncommon to see Tony have a drink, especially when he was tired or stressed out, but since he became Iron Man, he had lost the habit of drowning his own sorrows in alcohol, even if only for the fact that FRIDAY had a protocol that blocked his suits, preventing him from using them when drunk.

"She's been here for less than twelve hours and I can't already stand her anymore," Tony explained, pouring himself another glass and swallowing it in the same way as the first.

"I don't think being seen drinking at this hour set a good example for her," Steve commented with a disapproving look to which Tony responded with one of pure anger.

"Didn't you bathe her?" Clint asked him, throwing a quick look at the little girl, still committed to illustrate how FRIDAY worked to her small public, as a perfect promoter.

"I'm sorry, _what_?" Tony raised an eyebrow.

"You should have bathed her before dinner, because once she has finished eating, she will probably be out like a light and any attempt at dressing and undressing her will become ten times more difficult," Clint explained, the only one in the entire room to have experience in the parental field.

"I would like to remind you that I have never had the slightest intention to comply with the brat's absurd request of becoming her father if not on the paper, so I don't intend to deal with her in any way other than letting her sleep here and paying for the things she eats. For everything else, she will learn to do by herself" he replied.

"She's only six years old. She's able to do by herself less than a tenth of the things she has to do," Clint tried to let him understand.

"So what? I should _undress_ her, _wash_ her and _change_ her clothes, pretending that she is not a girl and that the whole thing might get me charges for child sexual harassment?!"

"She is expecting you to do that. Listen, at that age they still don't have a clear perception of modesty. It's normal for her that whoever is in charge of looking after her does similar things"

"But it isn't for _me_ ," Tony said.

Clint started to go on, but then decided otherwise, just standing up and shaking his head.

"Hey Morgan! How about if Uncle Clint helps you take a bath?" he yelled at the little girl.

She turned her attention from Sam and Rhodey to him, opening up in a smile.

"Really?" she asked happily.

A second later, Clint had taken the little girl in his arms and enthusiastically walked towards the elevator, listening patiently to Morgan's request to have her hair combed with lots of braids, so to have it curled when dried up.

The two of them returned to the common room twenty minutes later, just a few moments after the arrival of the seven, big pizzas ordered by Tony.

Morgan now sported pink pajamas and a pair of thick slipper socks with unicorns. She still had her hair wet, with a single, crooked and unsolid braid, and a toothless smile that went from ear to ear.

"Next time we will ask Aunt Nat to teach us how to make a real braid, since between the both of us we have not done that good of a job," Clint said, depositing the child directly on one of the island stools.

Tony watched Morgan throw herself hungrily on the first slice of pizza she found in front of her, aware that not even in a thousand years he would find the idea of doing what Clint had just done acceptable.

Did he want children? Of course he wanted some. With Pepper.

Would he take care of them? Yes. But with the right timing.

Dressing and undressing brats he had known for a few hours, touching their naked bodies as if nothing wasn't something he was able to do at the moment.

He didn't know how to do it and, most of all, he didn't want to do it.

Morgan ate three slices of pizza one after the other as if she hadn't eaten in weeks before slowing down her pace and starting paying some attention to the conversation that was taking place around her.

Usually during meals they just chatted around, talking about upcoming business or training and work.

But tonight all attention was focused on her.

"So? Fury told us you can see the future in your dreams but he hasn't told us how you do it," Nat asked.

Honestly, it might be quite useful to have at least a vague idea of how her power worked, so to not be caught unprepared if her visions had been accompanied by unusual things like flashes beaming out of her eyes or other similar nonsense.

Morgan shrugged casually, as if it was a small thing.

"I just see them. As if they were normal dreams. Only, they are always scary things. And they seem real, even if they're just dreams," she explained between a bite of pizza and the other.

"That doesn't sound very pleasant," Rhodey said.

Morgan made a face.

"No, usually not. The first time was the worst because it all seemed real to me, with people shouting and explosions, and when I woke up I couldn't stop shaking. Then I saw on tv that what I had dreamed of was happening for real and I was afraid it was my fault. That I had made it happen with my dream," she said quietly.

None of them knew what to say, because none of them was able to imagine the fears of such a small child confronted with a frightening and complicated situation like that.

"May I ask you what you dreamed of that first time?" Natasha dared to pry.

They saw her place the slice of pizza on the plate and her expression darkened.

"The Battle of New York. Mr. Fury called them _'chitauri'_ " she replied in an almost inaudible voice.

The room fell into a deep silence, broken only by the rustle of the napkins and slices of pizza being lifted.

That first alien invasion had left an indelible scar in all of them and in all the people who found themselves involved in what, in some ways, really appeared like a nightmare.

Calculating that Morgan couldn't have had more than four or five years at the time, it must have been a traumatic experience for her too.

"Did your parents help you out?" Natasha asked again, hoping to lessen the uneasiness that the kid was clearly feeling, but Morgan was quicker than her, straightening up abruptly with renewed vigor.

"FRIDAY, can you play cartoons?" she asked loudly, dismissing the seriousness of the previous speech at astonishing speed.

"I _have available 127 films classified in the category 'Animation' and about 50 complete animated series_ " was the AI's immediate answer.

"Do you have 'The Lion King'?" she asked again "Can we watch it after dinner?" she asked as she turned to them, without waiting for FRIDAY's answer.

Natasha blinked, caught off guard by the suddenness of the change of mood in the little girl.

"I don't see why not," she found herself saying, getting a howl of joy from Morgan, after which the girl resumed biting into her slices of pizza, swinging her legs satisfied.

The former spy cast a confused look at her colleagues, to which they replied with as much confusion or, as in the case of Sam and Clint, with a shrug.

Surely Morgan's arrival was going to bring not a few changes in their relatively quiet life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Morgan looks like an irritating brat in this chapter (and in some of the next ones) but she has her scars too and we will discover them later.  
> And btw, I love french fries on my pizza! XD
> 
> Thanks for reading. As always, leave a kudo or a comment if you liked the story so far (and so I know somebody is reading this).
> 
> Now I have the last episode of WandaVision waiting for me (no spoilers in the comment, please) and a freshly-bought copy of Skyrim for Switch to start (not my first ride. It's my forth copy of the game XD)


	3. Chapter 03

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did Tony tell you that he really doesn't want to be Morgan's father?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today was a good day (I did so well at my driving lesson!) so I will reward you with an early chapter! I'm still gonna post one on Friday, but this way people who stumble into my story will have more to read and something more to understand where I'm going with this plot.  
> Thanks for the kudos and, OMG, thanks for the bookmarks!! They made me so happy!
> 
> And guys, we are 10 days away from The Falcon and The Winter Soldier 1st episode!!!! I'm so excited!! I swear I watched the trailer, like, a dozen times!!  
> For those of you wondering, yes, Bucky will be in this story. It will take some chapters (like, a lot) but he will be there and there will be fluff between Morgan and him. And between Peter and him. But I don't want to spoiler too much so...
> 
> ... enjoy this chapter!

As planned, after dinner followed the screening of 'The Lion King', which Morgan watched with evident involvement, showcasing all of her singing prowess every time a character in the movie started singing.

It had to be one of her favorite movies, because the little girl seemed to know the dialogues in it by heart in a way that almost bordered on disturbing.

'Lady and the Tramp' followed suit , but as the night moved on, Morgan's stamina began to wane. The little girl followed the first half hour of the movie with her eyes that struggled to stay open and, at the end of it, she was huddled in the corner of the sofa, sleeping like a log.

"I think it's time you put her to bed," Clint suggested.

"Can't she stay where she is?" Tony replied bored.

"Not if you don't want her in a bad mood tomorrow morning" the archer snorted, amused.

"I thought I'd already made it clear that I have no intention to do anything that involves physical contact or mothering of any kind"

"Tony!" Natasha scolded him, astonished by her teammate's lack of empathy.

Tony had always been an egotist, they all knew, but over the years his egocentrism had somehow improved and there were many people in front of whom he lowered that wall of coldness and detachment.

Pepper, for example. Or Happy and the rest of the team.

Even Steve, despite their constant disagreements, had managed to earn a weird kind loyalty from Tony, that led the genius to react with little composure when his friend was in danger.

Not to mention the whole 'Peter' thing: Tony could pretend all he wanted that he was doing the bare minimum for the boy, but the truth was that he felt strongly responsible for him in a way that, like Clint had pointed out, was approaching without a doubt fatherly love.

But the rest of the world lay outside Tony's emotional sphere, a rest of the world that hardly deserved his attention.

It wasn't malice. Only coldness, mixed with some psychological mechanism with which Tony defended himself from pain.

"Well, I've already done my part for today," Clint announced, getting up from the couch and walking towards the elevator "Good night everyone!"

A chorus of greetings accompanied his disappearance to the floor above, but the problem still persisted and, for nearly two minutes, Tony stood waiting for any of the others to step up in his stead.

When everything the other members of the team did was respond to his dictatorial gaze with one of feigned confusion and innocence, Tony took it in his hands.

"Hey! Wake Up!" he called, starting to shake the little girl not too kindly.

Morgan opened her eyes with a clearly discontented grunt, struggling to straighten up and aiming a pout at the person who had just interrupted her sleep.

"What's up?" she asked, whining and rubbing her eyes.

"You have to go to sleep in your bed," he told her stiffly.

They heard her mumble a second protest but, a moment later, Morgan complied, sliding down from the couch and wobbling sleepingly toward the elevator.

Tony's sense of victory for being able to get what he wanted without any drama or tantrums vanished shortly after when, instead of entering the elevator and getting out of the way, Morgan stopped and turned to him.

"You don't come?"

He managed to stop before answering her 'Not even in your dreams' just because Natasha and Steve were giving him a dirty look, intense enough to make him waver.

"Hell, Tony! It's her first night here. You could at least show a little bit of understanding," Nat hissed at him angrily.

Knowing fully well that trying to argue would be totally useless and that clearly everyone was convinced that he should play the role of the good mommy, Tony just sighed and walked stiffly towards the elevator.

They went up into the attic, with Morgan yawning repeatedly and swaying asleep on unstable legs.

Once in the living room, Tony motioned her to go to her room but, once again, she seemed to be waiting for him to follow her and do the same.

Had he too been so fucking annoying as a child with his parents? Was that a typical brat behaviour or did he manage to get the most irritating kid ever?

Since the evening was now falling apart and his pride lay trampled and battered in a sea of humiliation, Tony suited her angrily, following her up to the bedroom door, from where he watched her climb up the big bed and get under the covers.

He was about to say goodnight and put an end to that torture when she reached out to him with both of her arms, clearly waiting for something.

He gave her a questioning look, raising an eyebrow. What the hell did that gesture mean?

"Goodnight kiss," she reminded him with an innocent smile.

"No"

The answer came before he could even evaluate any consequences that such a clear refusal could bring with it, consequences that ranged from offended tears to tantrums of colossal proportions.

He saw her confident smile waver and morph little by little into a confused and disappointed look.

"Why?" she asked him.

And damn, Tony cursed the very existence of that word. Couldn't there be a law that forbade children under eighteen from using that goddamn question, saving adults from the obligation of giving explanations?

Why did children always need to know the reasons behind what it was told to them?

Make her aware of the truth, that her presence there was unwelcome and that, had it been for him, he would have never accepted that whole adoption thing, didn't seem the best way to get out of the question as painless as possible.

So he found himself making up the first plausible excuse (or at least so he hoped) that it came to mind.

"Because…" he hesitated," in the Stark family we don't have the tradition of the goodnight kiss. It's something that goes way back to the grandfather of my grandfather's grandfather. We just whisper 'Goodnight' as quietly as possible " he invented.

It was not that far from the truth, since his father had never been the goodnight kiss type. He was just  bending the truth a little bit.

"Why?"

Tony wished he could strangle her.

"Because they were in the middle of a war and you had to be silent" he barked sharply and with much less imagination than before.

Little it mattered that the grandfather of his grandfather's grandfather had probably lived in the Renaissance and not during the War.

"Ok" she finally gave up "Then,  goodnight dad " she whispered in a very low voice.

They were almost imperceptible words but they sounded deafening to Tony's ears, throwing him into a state of panic.

There had been moments he had dreamed of being called that way, in which he had imagined an army of strawberry blonde-haired brats, just like Pepper, climbing up on his legs and jumping around.

But it was a vision of the past, that went to pieces when things between him and Pepper had started to take a turn for the worst, plummeting until they left them both in a weird limbo of friendship and confused affection to which none of them knew how to give a sense or explanation and from which neither of them dared to move.

And feel a  stranger , because that's how he saw Morgan, take a piece of that impossible future filled him with an unmotivated anger.

"Rule number two of the Stark Family: we don't use that word. We call ourselves by first names. My father called his father by his name and I too called my father with his name, Howard," he told her coldly, barely keeping at bay the anger in his voice.

"Really?" she asked in a small, soft voice, buried under the covers.

"Yup. So just use 'Tony'," he instructed her.

He thought she saw her nod but he didn't stay for any other questions, leaving the room and hurrying to retrieve a bottle of whiskey from the bar cabinet.

He poured himself a small glass and drank it at once, then he poured some more and allowed himself to sip it calmly.

Never as in at that moment he was regretting having accepted Fury's absurd proposal, because that little girl was as annoying as it was dangerous and the last thing Tony wanted was to be forced to confront that portion of paternal feelings and emotions that he had forced himself to close in a far corner of his mind when things between him and Pepper went to hell.

He forced himself to move into his own room and lie down, but sleep never seemed to come.

His mind was a turmoil of memories, regrets and awareness that there were so many things that could go wrong that he would probably end up losing his mind.

He didn't even dare to imagine the consequences if Morgan's existence like Tony Stark's adopted daughter would come out of the four walls of the Avengers Tower.

The company would have suffered, the public image of both Tony and the Avengers would have been affected and, above all, the whole mess would have complicated things even more with Pepper.

Because Pepper was a bright woman and fully aware of the nonsense of being Iron Man and dealing with spies and invaders from space on a daily basis, but even she would have had a hard time believing that Morgan was really a child who had  blackmailed Fury of all people and had Tony  adopt her as payment for her  clairvoyant services.

Hell, it sounded absurd even to his own ears!

It would have just appeared as one of Tony's typical, bad thought excuses, aimed at covering up the accidental pregnancy of some former flame of his who had now dumped the little girl on him.

And Pepper would have had every reason not to want to be a mother to a daughter not hers.

The two glasses of whiskey finally took effect late at night, dragging Tony into a deep and thoughtless sleep.

He woke up the next morning with a dry throat and a certain lethargy. The alarm clock on his bed table signaled eleven and  twenty-five and Tony thanked heaven for being his own boss, otherwise that morning of excessive sleep would have certainly cost him his job.

Breakfast was gone by now and it would soon be time for lunch, but Tony needed at least a coffee, if only to be able to drag himself in the shower and dress up.

He dragged his feet to the kitchen, yawning loudly and murmuring to FRIDAY to turn on the coffee machine.

He almost had a heart attack when a little dark head came up from behind the couch, murmuring in a complaining voice:

"I'm hungry"

"Holy Christ, Morgan!" he snapped, putting his hand on his chest, adorned with the ARC reactor that had saved him for years from a slow and painful death.

He had completely forgotten the presence of the child not only in the attic, but even in his life.

"There was nothing for breakfast and now I'm hungry" she informed again, climbing onto the back of the couch.

"The fridge is over there," he said annoyed, pointing at it "You are old enough to prepare yourself a sandwich without always expecting everyone to do it for you" he grumbled.

The day before he had tried not to be too harsh with her, but that morning he was already scraping the bottom of his patience and he didn't have the strength to pretend to be kind.

She looked puzzled for a moment, but then she moved in front of the fridge and opened it, looking critically at the contents and then extracting a pack of ham and a couple of slices of cheese.

Realizing what she wanted to do, Tony grabbed the bread package on the shelf by the stove and threw it on the counter near where she was sitting.

Unaware (or perhaps she preferred to ignore it) of Tony's bad mood, Morgan made herself a sandwich with ham and cheese, biting into it with satisfaction right while Tony poured himself his second cup of coffee.

He had almost come to believe she understood how things should be and that perhaps that could be a calm and relaxing morning, when she unloaded yet another bomb on him.

"And what about school?" she asked him, looking up from her sandwich.

Tony stiffened in place, his ears buzzing and his mind suddenly devoid of all thoughts.

"Which school?" he managed to ask her, even knowing how stupid the question was.

"The one I go to. In Queens. Mr. Fury said that I could keep going to that one because it wasn't a problem to take me there. He said that finding one closer would have been worse"

Of course he had forgotten about the  fucking school!

Because he knew how to build a humanoid, invincible armor and program artificial intelligences that acted and thought like real human beings, but he had  forgotten that kids usually go to school.

"I was supposed to be there at half past eight," she gave him the killing blow, unleashing an inner anger that he didn't even know whether to attribute to his own stupidity or to her total calmness.

"And it didn't occur to you to try to wake me up in time, so that I could make aggrangements and make sure that you arrived at school at a decent time?" he asked her, irritated.

This time his anger must have been more evident because Mogan lowered her eyes to her feet, but she clearly didn't consider herself as part of the problem since she shrugged her shoulders almost offended, saying:

"I tried but the door was closed and FRIDAY said I couldn't open it," she justified herself, nibbling again at her sandwich.

"FRIDAY, next time something like this happens, wake me up immediately," he ordered through gritted teeth.

"It  will be done, boss ," the AI replied with absolute calm.

That matter was getting complicated by the minute and God only knew how many other absurd nuisances would jump out in the next days.

Schools, friends, paediatricians, dolls... He was getting hives just thinking about it.

Suddenly, he felt the need to get as far as possible from there.

He walked with a focused step towards his room, under the child's confused look, and he reemerged a dozen minutes later, dressed and ready to go out.

"I'm going to the office," he said hastily, retrieving his briefcase and heading for the elevator.

Morgan jumped in surprise, sliding off the stool she was perched on and following him, agitated.

"What about me?" she asked worriedly.

"Stay here,"

"But I don't want to be here alone," the little girl protested. "What do I do all day?"

"Whatever you like. Sleep. Watch the TV," he replied hurriedly, now in the elevator.

He saw her give him a bewildered and worried look, but then the elevator doors closed and Tony could finally take a breath of relief. That little girl caused him an unpleasant feeling of suffocation.

The elevator took him down to the underground parking lot,  where Happy had been waiting for him, probably for at least a couple of hours, in the driver's seat of the company's black Audi.

Lucky for him, Happy was so used to the lack of punctuality of his boss that two hours of delay were almost normal.

"Good morning, boss!" he greeted him, getting out of the car and opening the door for the billionaire.

"If only it was," Tony greeted him back unhappily.

Being away from the main source of all of his problems was already making him feel so much better.

But of course there were still a couple of issues to settle.

"Happy, I'll need your services from tomorrow morning before my usual hour. I want you here at eight," he warned him after ten minutes of silence, trying to distract himself from the unpleasantness of the matter at hand by observing the morning traffic.

"Are you taking up the gym again?" Happy tried to guess.

"No, I already get enough exercise by saving the world," he replied." You'll have to drive Morgan to her school and pick her up when she get out, even if I don't have any idea of when that is"

Happy gave him a genuinely confused look from the rearview mirror.

"Morgan?" he repeated.

"That's right, Happy. Morgan. My daughter"

Happy hit the brakes so abruptly that Tony almost broke his nose against the seat in front of him. The cars behind them protested with long horn blows.

"D-did I miss something?" the driver stammered, turning to look at Tony with wide eyes.

"Keep your eyes on the road, please," Tony ordered, gesturing for him to turn around.

Happy complied, turning his attention back to the column of cars in the traffic.

Knowing the question was still stuck in the air, Tony snorted:

"Morgan is the brat that Fury and SHIELD have dropped on the team and that, for some reason, has demanded to be adopted by me, if we wanted her to cooperate with us. I find myself inclined to hope that this situation is not indefinite and that the uselessness of her presence will be evident to everybody as soon as possible. But until then, it's necessary to take her back and forth from school" he summed up.

Happy pictured a somewhat confused image of the situation in his head, given the lackness of important details, but he knew when it was best not to ask too many questions.

"No problem" he nodded with a smile "If the little one needs Uncle Happy, Uncle Happy is here for her" he promised.

"I don't see why you find it so exciting," Tony commented, but unable to affect his employee's optimism.

"Uncles are the ones who always fare better than the others. The benefits of having fun with kids without the disadvantages of being a parent. You can spoil them as much as you want and you don't have to scold them. I loved my uncle Teddy: he buried me with gifts and allowed me to do what I wanted in spite of what my parents said," he explained excitedly.

"I still fail to see what makes it so exciting," Tony repeated, bored.

To him, all that situation was just a big pain in the ass.

But at least that matter was settled too.

And school was ideal for keeping Morgan as far away as possible from him.

As people said: every cloud has a silver lining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are still following Tony's PoV, but soon enough we will see Morgan's too. I'm not that good at writing from a single PoV, so I usually alternate them so that I can express each character feelings in that moment.
> 
> This story was planned to have 3 different stages of Tony's and Morgan's relationship, starting from irritation, moving to tolerance to arrive to Tony being a very protective and loving father. And then there is a lot of chapters about their life together.
> 
> Thanks for reading, leave a kudo/bookmark/comment if you want and stay safe!


	4. Chapter 04

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony hates car seats and Peter is a good big brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello readers! Today is Friday and that means a new chapter!  
> Actually, I'll post two chapters, since this one is kinda short and uneventful.  
> But hey! There's Peter!  
> And his meeting with Morgan will be kinda important for what will happen in chapter 6.  
> I promise there will be more Peter (way more) later in the story. After all, IronDad/SpiderSon is one of the reasons I got so obsessed with Marvel.

Tony had hoped that, once the whole 'school' thing had been settled, his life could have resumed a resemblance of normality, a normality in which Morgan would only play a marginal role.

But he was wrong.

Because there was so much more to being a legal guardian to a little girl than just giving her a room, allowing her to empty his fridge and making sure she fulfilled her school duties.

The hardest blow fell on his routine.

Tony had never been a guy with fixed hours and a regular life, neither before nor after Iron Man and the Avengers, but he somehow had his own personal balance in how he spent his day and Morgan's presence destroyed it all.

He had to wake up early and supervise her breakfast, otherwise Morgan would have gone the whole morning trying to get him out of his room, with FRIDAY making it even worse by flooding Tony's room with  _ 'Morgan is asking permission to enter' _ and  _ 'I ought to remind you that you have to make sure that Morgan goes to school'. _

And when the little girl came back, always too soon for his taste, there was no way to stop her from annoying him the whole time with her requests for help with her homework or her proposals for board games and other stupid activities.

Because clearly a giant TV and a movie catalog that would make the Harvard Film Archive  _ pale _ in comparison, weren't enough to keep a brat busy and away from him.

Tony was constantly forced to stay in the office until late, to lock himself in his penthouse study or to disappear somewhere in the Avengers Tower that Morgan didn't know about or had not yet learned to access.

And although Tony had sworn to himself that he wouldn't ever have lowered himself to the role of mother hen, taking care of the little girl's basic needs, in the end he had to give up.

After four days during which Morgan had constantly failed to wash herself up and she had gone to school dressed like a blind man had chosen her clothes, with mismatched socks and shirts buttoned in the wrong way, he had found himself assisting her in her bathing, not without extreme irritation and strong embarrassment.

Tony supervised her showers from the bathroom door, handing her her bathrobe and making sure she washed her hair properly. And when she got dressed and undressed, the billionaire did his best to stare at her the least, not knowing where he  _ could _ set his eyes.

It was probably not what Clint  _ 'Perfect Father' _ Barton would have done, but it was as much as his own conscience allowed him to do without making him want to surrender himself to the authorities for child abuse.

Though perhaps the strongest blow to his pride came with the goddamn car seat.

Just when Tony had hoped he'd put an end to the problem of driving her to and from school, Morgan had put her foot down, refusing in her first meeting with Happy to get into his car because, according to her, it was not safe to travel without a car seat.

Attempts to convince her that Happy was a very good driver, that in the slow New York traffic they would hardly have crashed into anything and that there probably weren't even car seats compatible with the kind of cars that were in Tony's garage turned out to be useless. For some strange mental perversion of hers (and Tony in more than one occasion had come to wonder what kind of hippie parents had raised her), Morgan hadn't take a no for an answer, stating that she wouldn't get on any car that wasn't equipped to make her travel safely and, she had been eager to add, that her idea of safety translated into car seats studied especially for the age group 5-9, with padded seat and backrest that would have allow her to use the safety belt and see out the car window without having to stretch her neck too much.

Everything had then been worsened by Clint's contribution, who had supported Morgan's demand and had even offered to have a car seat sent from his house that used to be his daughter's.

But Morgan had been faster than the archer, sending an order on Amazon on Tony's behalf for  _ two _ car seats less than five minutes after he had started to consider the idea, which made him suspect that the little girl had her eyes on that particular model for years.

And so his black Audi and his very elegant gray Bentley ended up  _ soiled _ by those horrid car seats, to allow Happy to drive Morgan to Queens every morning and to pick her up after lessons were over without the child starting a protest.

Obviously, Tony had ordered Happy to use the less flashy cars in their garage and those less traceable back to Tony and Stark Industries in general, since Morgan's adoption was still classified and so should remain indefinitely.

The little girl had been well instructed of the fact that never, ever, on whatever occasion, not even in a life threatening situation, she should have revealed her connection with Tony.

He didn't care that somebody found out she was cooperating with SHIELD, that she had magical powers or that she lived at Avengers Tower. But for no reason in the world she could go around claiming that Tony Stark was her father.

It was already annoying enough for him to have to put up with her every day, without having to be forced to explain to people what kind of relationship tied them too.

Sitting behind the wheel of his convertible, a car that luckily still held its dignity, being devoid of child car seats, Tony took the access ramp to the Avengers Tower private parking lots, getting mentally ready for yet another afternoon of Morgan trying to get his attention.

Perhaps it would have been wise to schedule a trip to a toy store, in order to supply her with enough distractions and pastimes to keep her from bothering him every half an hour with absurd requests.

But buying her toys would have made him too much like a parent, something that might have put weird ideas about their relationship in her head.

When the elevator doors opened, the first thing Tony caught was the child's uninterrupted laugh, acute and excited; a sound he found he couldn't stand at all.

Morgan laughed often. Too often. Even for unbelievably stupid things.

She was the typical cheerful brat who had no problem in the world and whose optimism bordered on stupidity.

It wasn't that strange that she was laughing.

But when his line of sight finally turned to the living room of the common room, Tony found himself staring at a scene so absurd that the briefcase with his documents slipped out of his hand, falling to the ground with a muffled  _ thump _ .

Morgan was gripped like a baby koala on Peter Parker's back, who was  _ crawling upside down on the ceiling of the room, fifteen feet high. _

At the Tower they were quite used to his spider powers and over the course of their various collaborations they had ceased to be amazed at seeing him climb a building as if it had been the ladder of a slide or crawling on all fours on ceilings.

They had even stopped having a half heart attack every time Peter started  _ 'meditating' _ , hanging upside down from one of his webs, just like the arachnid he got his name from.

But in that moment that sight took Tony's breath away, because it would only take a more abrupt movement of the boy or a weakening in the girl's grip and, in a split second, Morgan would have fallen to the ground, splitting head in two and breaking her spine in a certainly irreparable way.

Which would finally rid Tony of her presence, of course, but it would also have forced him to live with the guilt of having allowed a six years old little girl to die under his nose.

But the cheerful, irresponsible duo of troublemakers seemed not to have by no means considered that scenario, given that the walk continued undaunted, eliciting the laughter of the two.

"Mr. Stark! Welcome back!" Peter greeted him cheerfully, when they finally noticed his figure, still paralyzed in front of the elevator.

"Hi Tony!" Morgan echoed between giggles.

With the usual grace and agility that distinguished him, Peter detached his feet from the ceiling and stood up straight, remaining attached to the ceiling only by the hands and then letting himself fall down, landing easily on the floor.

His landing was light and quiet, as if he had just stepped off a step and not from a height of fifteen feet.

"Ooh nooo ... Peter, get back up!" Morgan complained, shaking the boy's shoulders from her position, always clinging to his back, and asking him to go back to their dangerous pastime.

Peter was clearly fresh out of school, if the blue backpack abandoned at the foot of the couch was some sort of indication.

It was not uncommon for the boy to spend his afternoons at the Tower, usually observing and helping Tony or Bruce in the lab, undergoing some training session with Steve or Natasha or even just relaxing on the couch with whoever was willing to keep him company.

He may not have been an official member of the Avengers, but Peter was certainly part of the group.

And Tony didn't know if it was his famous spider sense or if the boy was simply good at reading other people's expressions, but Tony saw that Peter had guessed his dissatisfaction with him at the scene he had just witnessed.

"I came for the suit update. You know, the one we had talked about... But when I arrived there was no one," he justified himself, "and then I saw her coming down from upstairs and... " he added, spreading his hands as if to mean that things had taken that turn without him being able to do anything about it.

When questioned, most people tended to believe that the Avengers spent all of their time together. That they spent their days hanging out in their headquarters all day long.

But the truth was that each one of them had their own schedule and a wide range of different interests.

Tony commuted between the office and the penthouse, preferring the lab and workshop in his free time. Bruce loved to stroll around town or read chemistry journals in the library. Clint disappeared to his house whenever possible, or trained in the shooting range of the Tower or in the gym together with Natasha.

Sam and Rhodey still had a lot of responsibilities with their respective military corps to fulfill and Steve was the image man of the team, often busy keeping the government on their good side or attending stupid ceremonies that others refused to take part to.

Everyone came and went according to their schedule.

It was therefore not that weird that Peter had been greeted by an empty room. And it wasn't even less weird that Morgan didn't miss the opportunity to add a new person to her list of superheroes to annoy.

"I see. Who am I to get in the way of your idyllic relationship" Tony said dryly "But I'd prefer it if you'd refrain from piggybacking her irresponsibly on the ceiling.  I don't think her insurance covers accidents from superpowers and, unfortunately for me, she is under my responsibility"

Tony saw him blush to the tips of his ears.

"Oh! O-ok... Got it," he stammered stiffly.

Tony retrieved his briefcase and headed for the fridge, to pour himself a beer. Peter followed with his nervous and swaying walk, typical of when he felt vaguely uncomfortable.

"Anyway, I didn't... I didn't know you had a daughter." he said confused, Morgan still clinging firmly to his back.

"In fact, I don't. At least not in the classic sense of the term," Tony retorted.

"Peter! Let's go back up," Morgan sang from the boy's shoulder.

"Don't even think about it," Tony warned her in a dry tone and with a stern look.

She pouted and, finally, slid down from Peter's back.

"Tony, can you help me with my homework?" she changed the subject, hanging on the edge of the kitchen counter and showing off in her best pleading face.

Luckily, Tony was immune to it.

"Do you have cotton in your ears? Did you not hear what Peter just said? We have to work on his suit. We don't have time for homework," Tony answered, happy for once not to have to worry about looking for an excuse to get rid of her.

"Actually, I'm in no hurry. I'm free for the whole evening" Peter informed him, evidently too naive to understand that Tony wanted  _ everything _ but to help the little girl with her homeworks.

He opened his mouth to silence the boy and order him to go downstairs, when he came up with a wonderful idea.

If Morgan and Peter got along so well, why not use it to his advantage?

"Seriously?" he pretended to be surprised. "Then you are invited to stay for dinner. We will order Chinese," he smiled at him, pleased.

He saw a wave of sincere happiness illuminate Peter's face, because there was nothing that pleased the young man more than spending time with the heroes he always had admired as a child and of which he tended to not feel like an equal.

"Hey, great!" he cheered.

"And since you're here and you're a very good student, you can help Morgan with her homework while I fix the suit," he offered.

Peter's smile wavered slightly, uncertain.

"O-ok" the boy nodded "If you don't need my help…" he added, clearly hoping to hear the opposite.

"I built it, Peter. It's  _ my _ Spiderman suit. Of course I know how to fix it," Tony assured him.

He allowed Peter to assist him with maintenance and the suit updates just because, honestly, he appreciated his company and because being part of the boy's intellectual growth process caused him a certain satisfaction.

But he was also able to do it on his own.

"Of course," Peter murmured with a hint of disappointment that Tony preferred to pretend he hadn't heard.

"Have fun with your homework, kids!" he took his leave, disappearing behind the doors of the internal elevator and enjoying the idea of a long afternoon of uninterrupted distance from Morgan.

The update of Spiderman's mask night vision filter only took half an hour and, for the rest of the afternoon, Tony kept himself busy with a couple more side projects he was working on, listening from time to time to FRIDAY'S updates on the comings and goings of people in the Tower.

When he finally left the peace of the lab, the common room was swarming with people: Natasha and Bruce were setting the table, Steve was engaged in what sounded like a serious conversation with Sam and Rhodey (and Tony didn't doubt it was one of his serious speeches about the Army of which the three of them never seemed to get tired) and Clint was talking to Peter, who had Morgan clinging to his back once again.

He smiled at the scene, but certainly not from cuteness.

"Our Peter is such a good big brother" he commented, approaching the trio and praying that Barton did not interpret that sentence as an admission of the fact that he had paternal feelings towards the boy.

"I didn't do anything special," Peter shielded himself, vaguely confused by the unusual compliment.

"On the contrary! You were a big help!" Tony smiled, getting a dirty look from Clint "And I'm sure Morgan will be more than happy to have her favorite Spiderman to help her with her bath!"

Peter suddenly turned pale, his previous confused smile turned into an expression of pure terror.

"Bath?" he asked him in a panic.

"Yaaaay!!! Come on Peter!" Morgan rejoiced instead, swinging with enthusiasm and making the boy swing on his feet too.

"Stark, you're a monster," Clint said, shaking his head.

"Mr. Stark, I don't think ..." Peter tried to get out of it.

But Tony didn't give him time. "I want her clean, smelling like kids' shampoo and in her pajamas before dinner comes" he instructed him "Come on! Chop chop!" he added, seeing that Peter hadn't moved and that his panicked expression was turning into one of painful resignation.

After almost a minute of silent prayers directed to his mentor, Peter sighed in resignation and turned on his heel, heading for the elevator with Morgan chirping nonsense in his ears.

The two reappeared downstairs a good half hour later, right in time for the dinner they had ordered from one of the Chinese restaurants in the area.

Morgan was a bundle of joy and she hopped over to her stool, climbing on top of it, clutched in one of her ridiculous pajamas full of unicorns.

She had rosy cheeks from the hot shower and her hair was wet but perfectly combed, which made Tony suspect that Morgan had forced the boy to brush it again and again, until even the last, infinitesimal knot had been gone.

She always tried the same with Tony too, but he limited it to one or two brushes, just not to leave her hair looking like that of a madwoman.

Peter, on the other hand, looked like he had just come out of a typhoon, with two large wet spots on his sweatshirt, his hair unkempt and the face drained of all energy.

"It was the most terrible and embarrassing experience of my whole life," he whined, collapsing into the empty stool between Tony and Bruce.

"What an exaggeration!" Clint commented, sitting across from him and already digging into his box of fried rice.

“Inviting Liz to homecoming, by comparison, was a walk in the park. I felt like a pervert and I had no idea where to look," he explained horrified, hiding the face in his hands.

"All experience for the future," Tony tried to comfort him, although he perfectly understood the desperation of the boy.

He himself had given up and resigned to get used to that damn evening ritual.

Three generous portions of steamed dumplings and some Steve's war stories later, Peter cheered up enough to accept Sam and Clint's proposal to organize a Mario Kart evening tournament.

Noting the opening for yet another opportunity, Tony proposed the boy to stay for the night. But Peter guessed the hidden trap behind it and to not find himself forced to babysit his mentor's daughter once again, he left the room in the middle of a game that he was winning.

Tony let him escape, defending himself from the accusations of exploitation that rained down on him from the team right after. But his mind immediately began to elaborate new blackmails with which he could force his protege to take his burden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You like it?  
> As I said, we will have more Peter later in the story.  
> Just hang in there for a couple more of chapters and the good parts will come.
> 
> Aaand we are just a week away from The Falcon and The Winter Soldier!! I saw the 'Doctor Strange' TVCM for the serie and I was laughing so much! It's like reading a silly fanfiction! Are you excited to see it?
> 
> I have to say I was a liiiitle bit disappointed in the last two episodes of WandaVision. Not that they weren't good but... I expected a bit more. Or maybe my expectations were too high, because I hoped to see something like the 'House of M' finale. But we still haven't mutants in the MCU (speculations say we'll get Storm in Black Panther 2).  
> House of M is a really great comic. If you liked seeing Wanda lose control and create an alternate reality, you'll love House of M.
> 
> As always, kudos, bookmarks and comments makes me happy!


	5. Chapter 05

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team witness Morgan's power for the first time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we finally see Morgan's power.  
> I like a bit of action in my stories but it's not always easy to describe what's happening. I can see the scene in my head, but transalting it into words is complicated. I hope this is clear and pleasant.

The superhero career did not have fixed schedules and days off, but luckily Sundays were mostly quiet and uneventful, to the point that one wondered if terrorists and villains also loved to enjoy a well-deserved weekly rest on the weekend.

And at the Avengers Tower, Sundays were  _ enormously _ quieter than the rest of the week.

With the exception of Steve, who clearly still lived according to the old military routine of half a century before, that stubbornly woke up at dawn even on Sundays and spent his morning in useless exercises, the rest of the Avengers allowed themselves the luxury of laziness and an almost total rest.

Tony woke up at nine, took a shower and, with all the calm of the world, he began to prepare breakfast.

He wasn't surprised to see Morgan emerge from the hallway that took to the rooms at the exact moment in which the toaster popped up.

He still didn't know if the girl was a light sleeper or if her  system was controlled by her stomach, reacting to the noises of breakfast and waking her up.

What he knew was that Morgan appeared right on time in the kitchen exactly one minute before breakfast was ready.

At least, Tony had stopped being caught off guard every morning by her sudden appearance and wondering what the hell a little girl was doing in his home.

After a couple of weeks of living together, he was finally beginning to  _ accept _ Morgan's existence and her annoying dependency on him.

As usual, Tony tried to ignore her presence as much as possible, keeping himself busy with breakfast as she silently scrambled onto one of the kitchen island stools. He had learned that the less attention he gave her, the less likely she was to start showering him with words and nonsense.

But he knew immediately that there was something going wrong that morning. 

Morgan had been in the kitchen for at least three minutes and she still had to open her mouth, something that had never happened since the little girl started living there.

When he turned to slide a plate of eggs and bacon in front of her, Tony noticed that Morgan sported dark circles under her eyes, dark circles that would have made envious those that Tony used to have after his nights of partying and drinking.

But it wasn't just that.

Morgan looked...  _ tense _ , restless. She sat slumped on the stool as if she hadn't been sitting in years, but at the same time Tony could see the stiffness in her muscles and a veil of  distress in her eyes.

His first instinct was to wonder if the girl had made some sort of mess and now she  dreaded a scolding or punishment.

Maybe she had broken the lamp in her room or,  God wouldn't , she had wet the bed and now she didn't know how to confess it to Tony.

Because children of that age still happened to wet the bed, right? Or not?

He'd better ask Clint.

Still deep in doubt, Tony just ignored her, devoting himself to his breakfast and wondering when she would finally  spill the beans.

Unless, and he almost hoped it, the unusual restlessness of the child was due to her own  regret for her decision to live at the Tower with them and to her  consequent desire to go back to where she came from.

But whatever it was, Tony wasn't going to investigate it personally: let Morgan be who came to him. At six years old, she was more than able to explain herself, without adults needing to  jump through hoops to guess what was wrong.

They ate breakfast in an almost unnatural silence that continued throughout the morning, to the point that the anxiety of the child began to affect Tony as well.

After noticing her curled up into a ball on the sofa all morning, staring blankly and progressively more and more distressed at the TV, Tony's assumptions about what could have been causing such an  unsolit behavior abruptly changed from some probable trouble to a possible sickness.

And the last thing Tony wanted was to be with a feverish and sick child.

When they were sick, children were even more whiny and clingy. Not to mention, he didn't even know how to take care of himself when he got hurt during a mission, let alone look after a little girl in need of pediatric medicines and who knows how many other things.

A little cowardly, Tony ignored her the whole morning, as if denying that something was wrong could miraculously make everything go back as before. One of his bad, old habits that Pepper always got angry with him for.

Eventually, he spent most of the morning going aimlessly back and forward across the penthouse, with the sole purpose of glancing at Morgan and monitoring the weird evolution of her silence.

He wasn't worried about her. He was worried about himself and the possible incoming storm.

But nothing happened.

Tony made lunch (sandwich with salad and chicken) and they ate together; him pretending to be busy with some documents on his tablet and her always with the same depressed and subdued look as that morning.

He only heard her open her mouth a couple of times to ask for a glass of water or for something on the table and, he noticed, Morgan ate less than usual, merely nibbling reluctantly two sandwiches.

After the meal, Tony saw her return to the couch, where she bundled up in a corner, asking FRIDAY to change the channel to one that was showing children's cartoons.

Once again, it had been a rather anomalous behavior, as Morgan usually seemed unable to look at any program on TV without blurting out comments, jokes or remarks that made her quite annoying.

But by that point, Tony had begun to resign himself to the fact that the whole day would go on like that and that perhaps even the little girl had bad days in which her usually exaggerated exuberance failed her.

Kitchen cleaned and answered a couple of urgent Stark Industries emails, Tony decided to go downstairs, where the others were waiting for him for a little meeting about the recent interferences of the government in their activities.

Morgan seemed to have fallen asleep on the couch in front of her cartoons.

"FRIDAY, if she wakes up and asks for me, tell her I'm downstairs," he instructed the AI as he took the elevator.

" _ It will be done, boss, _ " she replied.

After a whole morning of creepy calm, the chaotic chatter in the common room was almost pleasant.

"Do we really have to ruin our day by talking about those old government  fogies ?" Natasha complained, taking a seat on one of the three couches in the common room.

"You took the words out of my mouth, sister," Sam followed.

He was wearing a jogging suit and looked ready to go for a jog, perhaps confident that their informal meeting would last as little as possible.

"We can no longer ignore the fact that they continue to try and get involved in our operations," Steve sighed, standing next to the bar.

He was the only one that during that kind of meeting was always standing, as if he found sitting down too unserious.

"I have a kind of weird deja vu," Tony replied, pouring himself a glass of whiskey and sitting down in the corner of one of the couches, next to Rhodey.

He took a sip and then theatrically lost a few minutes staring thoughtfully at the amber liquid in the glass.

"Oh yeah!" he then exclaimed with mock surprise "The Sokovia Accords," he said with clear sarcasm.

The Avengers' latest attempt to make a deal with the government and to grant the Department of Defense some involvement in their activities had ended with a clear fracture in the team, a dispute of epic proportions that had made half of the group end up in the international most wanted list and a very long series of remedial meetings and concessions that had barely avoided the  disbandment of the Avengers.

They had earned a new member of the group, Black Panther, and the precious alliance with Wakanda, but no one wanted to repeat the experience.

By mutual agreement, they tried to avoid talking about that 'Civil War' as much as possible, because some of the arguments raised had never really been resolved and some of them had yet to retract certain not exactly flattering claims towards other members of the team.

But clearly the US government didn't give a damn about the team's emotional balance, nor did they worry too much about a new possible internal conflict, since they did nothing but send complaints about their actions or proposals to harness them under their jurisdiction.

"Let's go on strike," Sam suggested. "Let's leave them one week without Avengers and then let's see if they're still in the mood to raise their voices with their hands bloodied by a couple of thousand of innocent victims innocent"

Steve sighed. "Guys, we all agree on stopping the Defense to snoop too much, but it doesn't have to be civilians that pay the price"

"Yet that seems the only way to make them  comply " Clint commented bitterly.

"Maybe, but we can try other ways," Steve tried to stay positive.

"Like what?" Tony asked amused "Elect one of us in the Congress? Forcing them to create a Ministry of Superheroes to give them the illusion of being able to command us? Steve, the truth is that they are afraid of us and of what we can do because, compared to us, they are nothing"

"Can you blame them?" Rhodey retorted. "They are up against demi-gods, sorcerers, African warriors infused of shamanic powers, technologies beyond their reach and a whole series of beings with superhuman physical abilities, able to crumple their tanks with one hand"

"All things we've never used against them but that we rather have made available to them. Except then being told they're not happy with it," Tony said.

"Tony, I'm not agreeing with them. I'm just asking you to put yourself in their shoes. Do you think that before War Machine it was easy for me to accept that out there there was someone who could do my job better than me with way less effort? That I had sacrificed the best years of my life to train myself only to be told that my work had been useless, because there was a Norse god who could wipe out a whole army of enemy soldiers in a minute in my place?" Rhodey retorted with an angry tone "Do you know what it means for a normal person?"

Bruce raised his hands in an attempt to calm things down.

"Guys, no one here is belittling anyone else"

"At this point, I don't think it's a question of the Army effectiveness or not," Natasha finally broke in "The whole thing revolves around the power and credibility of the Defense. They want to be able to take credit for what we do, show the electors that they are still the greatest military power in the world and that they also have control over us"

"I won't stand here waiting for them while people die," Clint repeated.

Tony rolled his eyes. "We've already talked about it" he said impatiently "it's the same  story of the last time"

They discussed the matter for nearly two hours, alternating rather animated bickering with more reasoned and controlled debates but, in the end, the solution they came up with was always the same: government interference could only slow down their interventions and undermine their effectiveness.

"Steve, can't you just go to the President and ask him to keep all those nuisances out of the way?" Sam finally asked, slumped exhausted on the couch after two hours of useless discussions.

"Yeah," Tony agreed, on his third whiskey "Slip in your Captain Patriot onesie and go do the puppy eyes at the President. It usually works"

Steve, who had finally sat down, sighed, his head in between  his hands.

"Believe me, he's just as sick of all of this as we are," he said.

Before anyone could go on, FRIDAY spoke up.

" _ Boss, Morgan woke up. She is crying _ "

They all looked up at each other, surprised.

Since she had been with them, they had never seen the kid with a more negative feeling than a simple unhappy pout.

"Is she okay?" Clint asked, as confused as the others.

_ "I do not know. She woke up with a start a few minutes ago and she immediately started crying and shaking. I thought it would be wise to warn you, _ " she explained.

Tony rubbed his temples, feeling the beginning of a migraine come up.

"She had been weird all morning," he muttered annoyed.

"And you haven't bothered to find out why?" Clint asked with clear reproach in his voice, getting up and walking towards the stairs that led upstairs.

They all ended up following him and, half a minute later, the whole team entered the penthouse.

As reported by FRIDAY, Morgan was balled up in the same corner of the couch where Tony had left her, but she was now sobbing quite loudly, rocking back and forth with the head pressed against her knees.

"Hey, sweetie. What's up?" Clint approached her with a calm and gentle tone, putting his hands on her arms and trying to stop her sobbing.

Morgan immediately looked up.

She was the  picture of despair , with cheeks flushed and wet with tears, a runny nose and her big violet eyes wide open with dread and shadowed by fear.

"They are going to die," Morgan sobbed immediately with a note of pain in her voice that, in such a small child, sounded disturbing to say the least.

Clint frowned and then exchanged a quick glance with the others, just as confused as he was.

"Who's gonna die?" he asked her.

A couple of sobs escaped from Morgan's mouth, shaking her from head to toe, and for a moment, it seemed that the little girl was unable to continue.

But then she sniffed and tried to explain.

"People. Many people. There was fire everywhere and it was hot and people were screaming and running away from all sides, but they couldn't escape. And the man dressed in orange was laughing. And then that kind of room fell over the city" she told them desperate, a new flow of tears clouding her frightened eyes.

Natasha looked confused at Steve, not knowing how to read what, to their ears, seemed like disconnected and meaningless sentences.

Maybe Morgan had been watching an action movie that had scared her. Or she had stumbled upon some newscast that had showed updates on some ongoing war somewhere on the planet.

Bruce was the first to get it right.

"Morgan, did you dream it? Have you seen that in a dream?" he asked her in alarm, kneeling in front of the little girl to be able to look into her eyes.

Morgan nodded.

"Is it one of those dreams you have? The ones that see the future?" Bruce wanted a confirmation.

When Morgan nodded again, the tension in the air picked up and everyone turned to look at Steve.

The Avengers worked under a democratic regime, with some elements more proactive than others, but Steve was more or less their spokesperson, because of the position as a war hero he had covered for decades in the eyes of the public opinion.

He was usually the one who planned and authorized any interventions.

But facing that unexpected turn of events, he was as confused and indecisive as the others: it was the first time they were confronted with Morgan's hypothetical powers and, although Fury had assured the team of her reliability, they were anyway at the mercy of the words of a six year old girl of whom they knew little or nothing.

Tony, in fact, was dubious.

"We can't  alarm half the world just because she had a nightmare," he spat out irritably. "Brats have nightmares all the time and I have no intention of  jumping at attention every time she has one"

"But if she is right, we could risk a delayed intervention. This is the main reason why Fury brought her here: prevent and not  stem ," Steve replied.

"I don't know how it's supposed to work, but it doesn't seem very clear to me," Sam admitted.

Steve, however, returned his focus on the child, crouching next to the couch and looking for her eyes.

"Morgan, can you tell us where you saw those things happening? In what city?" he asked her.

She moved her frightened look on Steve and Clint, the only two kneeling before her, since Bruce had gotten up and took a step back.

"I don't know," the little girl shook her head, replying with a whisper full of despair.

"Great!" Tony snorted in a low voice, rolling his eyes with skepticism "I don't see how we can get there in time if we have to travel all over the world in search of  _ 'Fire, shouts and orange men' _ " he quoted sarcastically.

But Steve didn't give up. "I need to know exactly what you saw." he asked. "Try to remember as many details as possible" he encouraged her in a sweet voice.

Morgan was shaken by a new sob, but then she took a deep breath and spoke again.

"The man dressed in orange was inside a big room, along with so many other people. They were all looking at the skyline outside the windows"

"A public place or maybe an event," Natasha guessed.

"And then they all started screaming and running. But there was so much smoke and heat and everything was shaking," the little girl went on.

It was too general a description to be able to extrapolate something really useful. Morgan had clearly described a dangerous situation but that could correspond to a big variety of scenarios, starting from terrorist attacks to natural disasters.

"You said there was a room that collapsed onto the city" Bruce reminded her "What does that mean?"

A shadow of pain passed in her eyes, as if that was the worst part of the whole nightmare.

"I don't know what its name is. The big room was on top of a large trunk. Like a plate on a stick. But then it fell down and crushed all the buildings and houses under it" Morgan repeated desperately.

They began to think at any flat monument on a stick, large enough to hold some people and risk crushing houses and buildings.

Then Bruce winced.

"The Space Needle," he whispered.

And all the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fall into place.

"Tony, Rhodey, take off immediately. With the others,  I'll see you at the Quinjet in five minutes," Steve ordered, leaping to his feet and running towards the stairs that led downstairs.

Tony sprinted to one of the walls of the penthouse, put his hand on a shiny metal panel apparently harmless and, a second later, a red light scanned his fingerprints, allowing him access to a hidden door.

Rhodey followed him into the hidden vault in which all the Iron Man and War Machine suits were stored. Some were old models no longer in use, others were supporting suits controlled by FRIDAY.

Tony had just to slip his hand into a simple bracelet hanging from a holder and, in the time it took to cross the room, the nano technology he had built the Mark XVII with, his current armor model, activated, covering his body.

His first armor had needed complex machinery to be worn, which made it uncomfortable and impractical in case of an emergency. But over the years Tony had improved it to make it easier to wear, reducing it to a mere bracelet that he wore every time he left the tower.

Unfortunately for him, Rhodey did not have the same advantages, given that the current War Machine model was significantly more massive than that of Iron Man, making the soldier's dress up process slightly more complex.

Tony took off as soon as he reached the opening that led outside the Tower, followed less than a minute later by War Machine, both heading to Seattle.

They arrived on the west coast in twenty minutes, the Quinjet just mere minutes away behind them.

Tony immediately scanned the integrity of the tower with the optical sensors in his suit, but FRIDAY didn't show absolutely anything out of the ordinary, fueling Tony's skepticism regarding the reliability of Morgan's words.

"I don't see anything collapsing," he said sarcastically.

"Maybe because it all comes down to  _ foreseeing _ things before they happen," Steve replied into the comms.

"Or maybe it's because nothing's going to happen," he insisted.

"Rhodey, fly over the area and look for suspicious vehicles or people. Sam, land on the roof and take a look there, then move at the base of the  panoramic terrace . Tony, find an entrance and get inside. The rest of us will go up from downstairs" said Steve "Remember, we're looking for a man dressed in orange"

Tony held back an irritated snort and obeyed, veering towards some external security  platform , where FRIDAY had signaled the presence of doors connected to the inside of the monument.

He saw Rhodey slowly fly around and with the corner of his eyes, he noticed Sam's figure landing on the roof.

Tony broke the lock on one of the doors with a small burst of energy from one of the propulsors on his hands and entered. He found himself in an empty corridor, clearly closed to the public.

He made the armor disappear, because people tended to react to the presence of Iron Man in two ways: with shrieks of panic about a possible danger or with shouts of admiration for the presence of a real Avenger a few feet from them.

Both reactions were equally little advisable in that situation, because they would cause more confusion than necessary.

Following the light chatter coming from the panoramic room that had made the Space Needle one of the most famous american attractions, Tony walked through some service corridors, leading out into the large covered terrace that went all around the  circumference of the tower.

The Space Needle had strict rules regarding the influx of people who could go up and stay in the panoramic hall open to the public, but despite that, Tony found himself practically engulfed by groups of tourists of all ages and nationalities, walking around and taking photos of the skyline beyond the glass.

He strode through the crowd at a steady pace, eyeing the presents in search of the elusive Orange Man Morgan had talked about and prayed for the people to stay busy at least more than a minute before they noticed the shimmer of the ARC reactor under his shirt and recognize him as Tony Stark, the man who flew around the world, saving the day as Iron Man.

Obviously, his presence immediately jumped to the eye of some tourists and, when Cap and the rest of the team made their entrance from the service lift, revealing their presence in an obvious way with their flashy costumes, there was no way to keep secret the arrival of the Avengers.

"Noticed anything suspicious?" Steve asked, approaching him.

"No orange man and no suspicious movement, if that's what you mean. But with all this crowd it's almost impossible to locate any explosive devices already positioned," was his reply.

He was starting to get nervous and he didn't even know if it was because they had found nothing or if it was because he suspected Morgan had probably screwed up.

"There's nothing dangerous out here. Only a few swallows' nests" Falcon updated.

"Ditto around here," Rhodey joined in.

Tony was about to tell Steve how that whole thing was ridiculous, that all they got from following Morgan's nonsense had been to find themselves in the midst of a crowd of tourists who were standing there, enthusiastically taking pictures of them, when Clint, who hadn't stopped for a second scanning the room with his eyes, noticed something.

"Hey!" he yelled at a man who, after making his way among the crowd of tourists to see what had got the attention of all those people, dashed towards one of the side corridors in a suspicious way.

Tony almost heard his ears ring when he noticed that the man who was fleeding was wearing an orange work suit with an electrical company logo. And damn him, he even bet that in his black duffle bag there were no tools and electrical cables, but small homemade bombs, ready to be placed throughout the floor.

They all sprinted in pursuit of the suspect, raising cries of surprise from the bystanders.

Steve and the others found themselves struggling to move in the midst of the crowd who now seemed to have sensed the danger and had begun to run away in various directions.

Tony followed a different strategy, wearing his suit again and soaring above the tourists, ignoring the screams of fear and panic caused by his passage.

He saw the man try to slip into one of the many elevators that connected the terrace with the floor-level entrance of the Space Needle, pushing away the people that had just arrived and pressing the buttons to make it go down.

Tony saw the doors close and accelerated, stopping them just before they closed completely and forcing them open once again.

The fake technician looked at him with a mixture of anger, resignation and panic then, before Tony could even ask him to surrender, he reached into his bag and activated the device inside.

The explosion shattered the whole panoramic terrace, making the floor tremble. The blast threw Tony nearly  sixty feet away, sending him crashing into the large panoramic windows that broke into a thousand pieces.

He found himself outside, falling to the ground.

"Tony!" came Steve's frightened voice from the comms.

"Nothing serious, I think," Tony replied, chasing away the numbness caused by the impact and lighting the gauntlet repulsors to steady himself.

Seattle's historical attraction was on fire in several places, judging by the columns of smoke that fled out from the opening where the bomb had blown up the windows and it didn't take long to understand that the explosion, limited to the area of the elevators, had undermined the balance of the overview terrace.

"We have to get all these people out of here," he shouted at Steve over the comms, barely audible in the shouts of the people. "And I have to play architect," Tony added to himself, heading towards the metal arches that supported the structure.

Steve would certainly organize the rescue and Falcon and War Machine could easily bring down any stranded tourists.

But someone had to try to avoid that the whole structure collapsed and he was perhaps the only one with enough knowledge (or with enough FRIDAY) to succeed.

"FRIDAY, dear, what's the most urgent part?" he asked the AI.

" _ The arches that support the horizontal floor of the structure show weakening due to the high temperatures caused by the explosion _ ," she suggested, highlighting the weakest points on the screens inside the helmet.

Tony moved toward the arches. There were no visible cracks or clear signs of damage yet, but FRIDAY's thermal readings were quite eloquent and, without immediate help, the heat would have melted the metal that would then fold under the weight of the structure.

And at that point Morgan's prediction would find its full realization.

Tony knew he couldn't find  'props' large enough to fit the mammoth size of the Space Needle, but perhaps the pre-existing arches only needed a little help.

"Where do I find some iron, FRI?" he asked, looking around.

" _ There are maintenance railings in the top part of the terrace roof _ ," the AI informed him.

"I allow myself to borrow them," Tony agreed, rising above the tower and immediately identifying the big safety railing, probably mounted there to secure the protection of maintainers.

"Tony, I need you to fly the tourists down. Three of the six elevators are blocked and there are injured people who are unable to move," Steve called.

"I'm sorry. Try again. At the moment I'm rather busy preventing the whole shack from collapsing entirely," he replied.

Inside the terrace, the smoke had now invaded most of the floor and many of the tourists were lying on the ground, as close as possible to the openings in the windows.

He passed Rhodey flying towards the ground with two tourists in his arms and, on the opposite side of where he was, Tony could see that the Quinjet had also been adapted as lifeboat, to speed up getting all civilians to safety.

He knew that people's safety was a priority, but there would have been thousands more victims if the Space Needle's terrace had come off and crashed on the dozens of buildings below.

Using the laser, Tony broke off a piece of the railing and, going back near the arches, he leaned it against the metal of the structure and began merging it using one of its propulsors.

He repeated the operation with all the ten main arching, melting pieces of railing to reinforce the already existing structure, and then he devoted himself to settle also some of the minor arches, cooling the parts too hot and meticulously checking that there weren't other weaknesses in the tower.

The evacuation and rescue of all the tourists took almost half an hour, but when the operation was finished they counted about fifty lightly injured civilians, three most seriously injured that had been involved more closely in the blast, and a single victim, the bomber.

Not to mention that the Space Needle was still standing firm on his leg and that none of the surrounding buildings had received the least damage.

A more than commendable result if you took into account the potential danger and the fact that, normally, the Avengers interventions were always slightly more  _ destructive _ .

After having given yet another check on the thermal situation of the building, Tony finally landed at the base of the tower, where Steve and the rest of the team were gathered to update the authorities, just arrived on the spot.

Tony counted twenty-seven ambulances lending assistance to the  wounded and intoxicated and sixteen police cars, as well as a couple of military trucks.

"The bomber blew himself up. I believe the body is still somewhere up in the elevator area" Steve was saying to what appeared to be the chief of Seattle's police.

A man in a suit and tie joined them at a fast pace.

"Were there any casualties?" he asked both the cop and Captain America.

"No, Mr. Mayor. Only the culprit. Some tourists were caught up in the explosion and have already been brought to the hospital. For the rest, only a few injured and a few intoxicated," the man reported.

They saw the mayor of Seattle sigh in relief and some of the tension that had pulled his face seemed to loosen up.

"What about the Needle? It won't collapse, will it?" he asked desperately.

Tony didn't envy him: a bombing was enough of a mess by itself without having to deal with the loss of the main tourist attraction of the city too.

"Not immediately," he replied. "I strengthened the main arches and, once the internal fires are extinguished, they should continue to hold up. But I would suggest you start work on repairing them as soon as possible"

The man gave him a grateful smile and then held out his hand to Steve.

"I don't really know how to thank you. Your intervention was more than timely and, without you, I would have had dozens of deads to mourn today" he thanked them, shaking Steve's over and over again with sincere gratitude.

Another twenty minutes passed before the team was finally free to get back on the Quinjet and return to New York.

"Can't wait to take a shower," Rhodey protested wearily, slumping into one of the seats of the plane with a grunt.

"What are you complaining about? You let the armor do all of your work! I had to carry all of those people in my arms," Sam retorted.

"Why must men always transform everything into a competition?" Nat, whose hair was disheveled and sported soot-stained cheeks, stopped them.

There was almost a full minute of silence before someone, Rhodey, finally dared to voice that single thought that was filling everyone's mind.

"I confess I was skeptical of Morgan's powers" he admitted "Not that I didn't believe Fury but ... well, we were talking about  _ seeing in the future _ "

"After meeting Thor and Strange, you're still amazed by that kind of things?" Bruce asked, almost amused.

He was the only one in decent condition, as the Hulk would have done more damage than anything and so Bruce had stayed away, to help with the rescuing part.

"If you don't consider all the parts that coincide with mythology, Thor is pretty much an alien. That kind of thing doesn't amaze anyone anymore. And I don't want to talk about the sorcerer " he grumbled in response.

"Magical powers or not," Steve began, "what matters is that Fury was right. Morgan's predictions can really make the difference between the life and death of many people. If it weren't for her, that bastard would have been able to place all his bombs undisturbed and we would have never arrived in time to prevent the collapse of the tower. It would have been yet another massacre that we couldn't stop" he reasoned.

Nobody dared to argue or contradict him but, inside himself, Tony just felt a growing sense of anger.

He had doubted Morgan's ability the exact instant Fury had told the team about it and it had been even more skeptical after having the little girl under his eyes for weeks.

Morgan didn't even know how to soap her hair by herself, how could she be able to predict catastrophic events and notify them in time to organize countermeasures?!

No, Tony hadn't believed anything Fury had claimed and he had been happy, because it meant he'd have a more than valid excuse to get rid of the kid.

But after such a show of  _ effectiveness _ , he knew perfectly well how the team would react to any attempt he could make to send Morgan back where she came from.

Clint and Natasha would have looked at him wrong, Bruce with displeasure and Steve with striking disapproval, because Morgan had proven to be useful to them, useful to the point of being  _ indispensable _ .

If they sent her away, they should have kicked Peter out too, since his contribution to the Avengers was always marginal, and cut ties with that crazy bunch that ran around the universe, making one trouble after another.

Unfortunately for him, Morgan had just become  _ untouchable _ .

Not only that: the little girl had also just earned the right to do as she wanted, because it was now clear that her power was indispensable and that preventing her from leaving or stopping collaborating with them was essential.

And of course Morgan didn't want toys, treats and not even money in return. Morgan wanted a father.

She wanted Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew... This one was long...
> 
> Hope you liked it!  
> If something wasn't clear, feel free to ask in the comments!  
> Also, I've never been to the Space Needle... I never even set foot in the US... so bear with me if my description of it is not realistic
> 
> Have a good week!


End file.
